


Childhood

by Ithika



Series: Remorseless [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Backstory Island, Gen, Slavery, Vane's childhood was not good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 17:13:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11833299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithika/pseuds/Ithika
Summary: No matter how hard he tries, when Vane casts his mind back, all he can remember is chains. He knows that he had to have had parents, but if he had ever known them, those memories are lost to him.





	Childhood

No matter how hard he tries, when he casts his mind back, all he can remember is chains. He knows that he had to have had parents, but if he had ever known them, those memories are lost to him. 

There are things he  _does_  remember from his boyhood. Things that are the reason he yet sleeps with one eye open, things that will never truly leave him, even with Albinus slain, his men now loyal to Vane or dead. 

If you ever had the remarkable privilege of having him speak candidly with you about this time, (and you would not, for he is only barely honest about it with himself, and has never revealed the full story and his feelings on it to anyone, it being only ever surrendered in pieces and with great reluctance) you would learn that he sees it ultimately as a source of both his greatest strengths and most crippling weaknesses.

He remembers first of all the cold, cruel weight of manacles. While during the working hours of the day - and there are enough of these - he was not chained, the manacles at his neck and ankles were never removed. Despite their constant presence, they chafed and bruised his tender young skin: much like saddle sores on a neglected horse, and a beast of burden is closer to how he was treated than anything else.  
  
No, the chains came at night. When work for the day finally ended, long after the sun had sunk below the horizon. What time there was allocated for rest, the youngest boys spent chained neck and ankle to one another. So many bodies in the rude hut they sheltered in at least provided warmth beyond what scratchy hessian and wool blankets they were offered, although it never grew very cold in that place. And every morning, in the pitch dark before the dawn, the chains would be cast off, and work would begin anew.   
  
The lads who survived into adolescence earned the privilege of sleeping unchained in a new hut. This was equally base as the last, but seemed all the finer for the addition of sleeping pallets, and the reduced number of slave children who made the hut their home. At this age, the growing lads were also given shoes. Nothing fine or fancy, of course, scarcely even a shoe by any honest account: a few scraps of leather to bind to your foot in a crude boot and nothing more. But these gifts were cherished by all the boys at first, even Charles - the first thing he could remember being his own. 

The hut, the pallets, chainless nights, the shoes. To Charles and the other teens, at first it had seemed like kindness - like perhaps things were about to change. But in truth, the hut was scarcer populated because teenagers cost more than children, and so when a teen died he was not so swiftly replaced, nor were more often bought - their ranks were swelled by younger lads coming of age, most often.  And the chains, it happened, were simply a less efficient method of control than the shoes. 

The shoes were retrieved at the end of every day, stored somewhere the boys knew not where, and redistributed at every new day. While he had been as enamoured with the new clothing as any other boy in the beginning, Vane had a persistent obstinate and stubborn nature that asserted itself at every opportunity. And so one morning he learned that wearing them was not an option, but a command, lending weight to what he’d begun to suspect. It would be months before his suspicions were confirmed: one of the older boys tried to escape during the night, but with bare feet made tender from the protection of the shoes, he hadn’t made it very far, dragged unceremoniously back to the lumber mill and flogged before being put immediately back to work, his lacerated feet having betrayed him both in speed and to the hounds.

It was deliberate, of course, that some of the teens tried to escape, just as it was deliberate that the tiny kindness of the shoes stirred loyalty in the hearts of some of the children. Those with less fire in them redoubled their efforts at work in the hopes of being granted even greater favour and privileges, while those who yet yearned for freedom would surely see the lack of chains as an open invitation to an easy escape. These were easily caught and made example of, for the wild earth around the mill was harsh and unforgiving, rocky and jagged and trackless.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as the first entry in the 100 days of headcanons challenge that I'm still determined to finish. It got a little out of hand. I have a lot of feelings. (Originally posted at oftheranger.tumblr.com in September 2015)   
> I really like it though, and I have more thoughts, so it might end up with more chapters. Who knows? Thank you for reading!


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